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It’s not permanent is it?

Some years ago, I decided to have eyeliner tattooed. Yes, on my eyes. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

It was the worst sensation ever. I was trying to slide down the bed to get away from the lady administering this torture. She was hauling me back up by my ears.

She told me that I had to come back for round two a few days later. She sent reminders. I think I blocked and reported her.

On the way home I phoned a friend crying. Come here immediately she instructed, I have wine.

Despite this, I recently decided my eyebrows needed attention. Because, sadly, they are fading. Disappearing really. And they weren’t ever very evident to start with.

Yes… The lady said, I can see why you are concerned, I think we are going to do a Blade and Shade procedure here.

Will it hurt was my only query.

Apparently not. Lying bitch.

You have very strong skin she repeatedly told me. VERY strong. Have you ever been told that?

What, that I’m thick skinned? No…

What skin products do you use she asked, do they have retinol? I don’t know I replied, I’ll have to enquire with Take a Lot.

She looked mildly alarmed and I could see wanted to launch into how I really should take better care considering my advanced years.

She refrained. Retinol, she said, is very good for the skin, but fades the eyebrows. Who knew?

So much to fret about.

Oh dear, she said, I’ve dropped some of the ink on your cheek. It wouldn’t stain normally, but you have an extraordinary amount of fuzz on your face, I’m just going to shave this bit.

Here is your care kit she said. Try and not get your new eyebrows wet.

What, forever? They are on my face.

Just warn your partner she said, tomorrow they will be very dark, and then they will fade a bit. Oh yes, they may scab. Let me know in a month if you need a touch up (not likely to hear from me again).

Sure enough, when I bought my lovely man his morning cuppa, he definitely recoiled.

Don’t expect to see me around too much.

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Wake up!

My lovely man has sleep apnea. Not recommended.

He LOVES to sleep. If I take my eye off him for 5 minutes, he’s inclined to doze off. So… I have to give him things to do. He doesn’t appreciate this as much as one would expect.

He is also inclined to nightmares the poor soul.

Luckily for him, I’m inclined to broken sleep, so I hear him gasping. I’m sure there is no connection between his nightmares and my helpful inclination to say ‘darling, wake up and roll onto your side, you’re gonna die otherwise’

I’m not sure what single people with sleep apnea do, do they even know?

Anyway, getting this sorted out is a bit of a process. Back and forth to specialists.

It also involves connecting him up to sleep with various apparatus. First to diagnose, then to determine what CPAP thingie and mask is required.

Quite complicated.

These things measure whatever while he sleeps. Our snoring, gasping, wheezing and farting is all now a matter of public record and in the cloud God help us.

Our biggest concern has been that this dear woman who is measuring all this now knows what time we retire at night.

When she was explaining to us she made ridiculous statements like ‘so when you go to bed, at say 10pm..’

We glanced at each other at that point…

So…. The hardest thing during this process is to stay up past our normal bed time.

Despite our efforts, she gives us a sweet little smile and shoulder squeeze.

She knows we are pathetic.

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Time saver tips

I met with a friend a little while ago. Luckily she’s not on social media, doesn’t know about my posts and general indiscretion.

She’s a very busy girl. Show me an unbusy person these days… It’s all relative isn’t it? Life is hectic.

Anyway..

She was relaying a story about a guy she went out with when she was much younger. A very nice bloke she was at pains to tell me. Until…. She woke up in the middle of the night and he was fiddling with her and trying to have his way… I know, horrifying.. This, apparently, was his preferred sexual encounter.

Surprisingly, the relationship didn’t last. ‘Is it because…’ he asked when she ended it. ‘No, no’, she said (what do you think buddy?)

I look back on it now, she continued.. And it seems very efficient. I mean, I might have to drug myself so that it wouldn’t disturb my sleep, but I would be able to tick my to do list before my first cup of coffee.

Look him up, I suggested helpfully, he would probably sponsor the drugs.

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What’s going on with my face?

I’m at an age where wrinkles are happening. Happened really. Gravity is not a friend.

However, my face is not wrinkling in a normal manner I have observed.

I do not have crows feet to indicate a joyous life full of laughter. Which is sad really.

My wrinkles are appearing above my eyebrows. Oh, she means her forehead I hear you think. No… Not really. Deep grooves above the ear side of my eyebrows. As opposed to the nose side of my eyebrows.

Are you with me?

Probably not… Because this seems to be an original thing. I know… Because everyone I meet I peer at to establish if they have these annoying lines.

I am alone.

I can only conclude that I have spent my life to date astounded.

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Are you feeling the love yet?

We went to South Africa for a bit.

Sorting out something my lovely man required.

While there, we had some laundry done.

I swear they’ve knicked my knickers I commented to my lovely man as I was packing.

(I know what you are thinking, what sort of uncouth person gives their smalls to a stranger to wash? Well, obs I won’t again, the frigging pervs).

Surely not my lovely man replied immediately, can you imagine how big that girl must have been?

What the actual….?

No, no her recovered, I meant the other way around.

Anyway, I’m circulating a petition promoting euthanasia, will you sign?

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Oh, you don’t want to do that..

I recently had to fly somewhere. 

For some reason, they upgraded me to business class. They have done this a few times.  I am unworthy, but grateful. Hey ho. 

Of course, I feel like a bit of an imposter… Because, you know… I ain’t paying those prices and presumably everyone else has. 

My temptation is to ask everyone around me if they’ve also been upgraded. But… I resist this. 

I accepted my moist, warm towel like a pro. 

So, I try and fit in by being an arsehole. For instance, I insist that they close the curtain between us and the poor people. I also complain about the superior food and real cutlery and demand a brand of whisky that no-one has heard of. I don’t drink whisky.

You know… Showing my class. 

They now ask everyone to put their gadgets on aeroplane mode. They’ve given up asking everyone to switch everything off, have you noticed?  We watch a lot of aircraft disaster investigations and I’ve never seen the report indicating that the plane went down because someone left their Bluetooth earbuds on.  Still…. I glowered at the fellow who put his fancy Bose headphones on.  I took a picture of him in case we went down and then they would know why.

Then the air steward fellow told some lady that her bag was too big to be stowed at her feet. He took five minutes to wrestle it out. We were all astounded that she managed to get it into that space in the first place. And where had she put her feet even? When he man-handled it to a storage place the plane tipped with the weight. I swear it was one of those bales of clothing the generous European people send to Africa to clothe us. Bless them. 

Clearly a lucrative business because she was in business class. 

Then… I didn’t know what to do with my toothpick. It’s an awkward thing to give someone to dispose of, isn’t it? Can’t just hand it to anyone… Even if you are business class.

So… And I warn you to stop reading now… 

The lovely fellow (paying) in the seat next to me had had a juice. So.. I leaned over a wee bit and shoved my toothpick down the little straw. He was dozing. 

I thought he had finished it; it was in the seat pocket! 

To my horrow he removed it to have a last suck of remaining juice. 

That’s gonna hurt I thought.. 

I stopped him. 

I don’t think they’ll upgrade me again. This guy has put in a word. 

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Not mum of the year then?

Circumstances have dictated that we’ve become a bit of a tortoise sanctuary. I get enormous pleasure from my handful of little hinge back tortoises. They, sadly, do not get as much pleasure from me… but there you are… they are a lesson in unconditional love really.

Every time we travel, I come home to jubilant welcomes from my pups and cats. Not to mention Mandova. Heartwarming stuff. The tortoises couldn’t really give a flying… nobody thunders out to greet me.

Tommy, the original chap, did find his way into my office the other day. I was ecstatic. He dropped a large turd and exited. I guess that was a request for indoor plumbing, who knows. We have a little way to go on house training.

We are up to 5 tortoises now.

Because my lovely household know how much pleasure I get from seeing them (I feel like I am living in a nature reserve when I sit on the verandah and a tortoise wanders by), they call me every time one is spotted. Because I am the only one who can tell them apart, I spend a lot of time looking at the same tortoise, who has moved a few metres and then been spotted again by my lovely man or Mandova. I actually don’t mind, I am grateful for their thoughtfulness and I do like seeing the little fellows.

We are still relatively ignorant on tortoises but what I can advise is there is a lot of sex. A lot. This has, inevitably, resulted in babies. Eggs, they lay eggs. The girls take weeks and weeks of rumbling around and digging holes to get to the point of actually producing anything. During this time, the sex doesn’t stop. There should be a crime line they can phone.

But, last night, my old girl, Tummy laid eggs. Great excitement. She is the biggest and presumably the oldest (ages are a secret not shared), and she’s really battered. Perhaps there was an errant lawnmower in her past. Doesn’t stop her getting lucky it appears.

So, she laid some eggs. Nowhere near any hole that had previously been dug. She laid them on the pathway paving. And crushed one of them during her labours it seems.

On the morning of the evening birth, she was quietly having a drink of water when she was rudely pushed into the water bath and assaulted from behind. She probably still doesn’t know by who. When I asked her this morning who the dad of this lot were, she advised that how do you even know what baked bean actually makes you fart?

This morning, Tommy was wooing her again. Straight after a night of labour! Rude.

So, now we have eggs. Whether they are fertilised or not is an unknown. They are surprisingly large. Apparently the survival rate is quite low because nurturing is not really in the nature of a tortoise. I gave Tummy some mushrooms and cucumbers this morning and congratulated her. She was not enquiring of what I had done with her growing babies. Not mum of the year this one.

A friend advised me that I need an incubator for the eggs. I informed my lovely man who said ‘wot, do they have incubators in the wild then, maternity wards and health care?’

Guess the eggs are taking their chances.

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Living his best life

My lovely man and I travel what is known as the Beira Corridor quite regularly.

Beira port functions well, so road transport is alive and well in our neck of the woods.

For a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with, I am the designated driver. I get no thanks for this act of service. I do get an ongoing stream of input. Mostly ignored. Except if we are in imminent danger. I then react… But grudgingly.

Another thing that happens quite grudgingly is the acknowledgement that there are a bucket load of trucks on the roads. Road improvement, road widening and managing this volume at the borders is not an obvious priority.

If you ever feel a bit mizzy about your job, thank your lucky stars you are not a truck driver on the Beira Corridor. Patience in abundance seems required.

So, on a recent road trip, we found ourselves in a grid lock of enormous trucks, trailers and other cars. Patience…. was not in evidence.

After a time when it became apparent nothing was going to move, my lovely man bounced out of the car ‘to see what the hell is happening’.

A further significant period of time passed and it dawned on me he may be lost for ever.

I immediately panicked. But then…. I realized he hadn’t taken the biscuits.

Another epoch passed as I munched happily on the biscuits and beamed up at all truck drivers around me.

I pondered if I should consider rationing the biscuits.

And then! Miraculously, we started to move. I wondered vaguely where my lovely man was in this chaos of trucks, trailers and cars and looked fondly at his phone that was in the car, with me. I hoped that we would find each other somehow, or that he would at least find his way home one day.

But! It was him! My lovely man. Kicking arse and taking names. Full traffic cop mode. Instructing people left and right to stop being knobs and move this way and that way. Saving the day. His only regret was not having a reflective jacket. And maybe a little cap. And a gun. Or at least a baton.

Everybody loving him and grateful.

And in no time we were on our way. What a guy.

What happened to the biscuits he asked me.

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Happy birthday girls

My mother would have been 81 today. We lost her when she was 46. So, today, as I do most days, I mourn the loss of my extraordinary mother.

Today is also the birthday of one of my little fur babies. Bella pup. She is 9. Actually, I am not sure her exact age or birthday, as I had to estimate it. But, I chose it to fall on my mum’s birthday.

My lovely man is very kind to all the little animals I impose on him. It’s difficult to say if he has a favourite, but he certainly has a soft spot for dear little Bella.

Bella has selected to sleep at the top of the bed, between our pillows. Her little head on my lovely man’s pillow. I get the arse end, I’m not sure if you picked that up. She gets a little kiss on the head from him good night. I refrain from kissing the bit next to my face.

The other day she had a dodgy tummy and we listened to it rumbling something terrible. It was still rumbling like crazy when we retired to bed and she settled into her spot.

As I went off to shower, we glanced at each other and the unspoken thought was ‘is she gonna shit the bed?’

I climbed into bed, my lovely man tenderly stroking her little face and he announced…. ‘you might want to sleep facing the other way, she’s farting like a dragon’.

No thought of removing her from the vicinity. Isn’t he the loveliest?

Happy birthday mum and Bella. We count our blessings for our lovely fella.

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The continuing bee saga

You may remember our attempts at bee keeping. Apiculture for those in the know.

We are far from in the know. A few You Tube videos and we were thoroughly daunted and reaching for the wine.

Our newly purchased hive was attracting nothing, until we put it in the garage and it became the location of choice. Making getting in the car hazardous.

So… We moved them all out the garage into the common area corner of our complex. As a result of my fear of my dear Alfie pup enraging them into a killing frenzy if they were in the garden.

The entrepid Mandova maintains them somewhat. Making sure water is available and that there are lots of pebbles to sit on so that they don’t drown.

I am learning so much about all the animals you take in and I have to look after Mandova advised me. I’m sure with gratitude for the opportunity.

Just as we did this and beamed at each other proudly as to how they were thriving, some of the gorgeous young mums in the complex invested in and built a playground for the little ones in same common area.

What could go wrong we thought.

Maybe if we tell the mums and kids to stay away from the hive my lovely man suggested.

Have you met a toddler I replied.

So… We have given away our hive and some bee fellow took it and most of the bees away in the dead of night.

Supervised, of course, by our self named Estate Manager, Mandova.

Some anti histamine was required. The less said about that the better.